Something Shiny: ADHD!

If you have ADHD and grief shows up, do you stay busy? Keep moving? Find something else to do? Stay ahead of the quiet? And then through it all does it find you anyway? Waking up at 2 AM, out of nowhere, when you thought you were past it?That's not you doing grief wrong. That's just how ADHD brains grieve. And this episode is about what to actually do when it catches up.Last time, David and Isabelle unpacked why ADHD brains seem to grieve in the wrong order. Why you can stand dry-eyed at a funeral and then fall apart completely at a graduation. And why neither of those things means something is wrong with you. Then they get into the part nobody usually makes time for: what to actually do when it shows up.In this episode:Why ADHD brains get practical when grief shows up, and what it costs when everyone goes homeThe empirical case David makes from his own life for why how much you cry has nothing to do with how much you lovedWhat it actually means to grieve something that isn't a person. A city. A chapter. A version of yourself that no longer fits.Isabelle's therapist's tool for making a date with your grief so it stops ambushing you at 2 AM-------Wait, What's That? Here are some of the terms and people mentioned in this episode explained:Time Agnosia The ADHD experience of not being able to feel time passing the way neurotypical brains do. In this episode it comes up as one explanation for why grief doesn't hit when everyone expects it to. Your brain isn't programmed to feel things on the service's schedule. It hits when it hits, in its own time, in a future moment you weren't ready for.Asynchronous Processing What happens when your brain doesn't process the big emotional stuff in real time. You can be right in the middle of something and feel completely fine. Then weeks later on a walk, out of nowhere, it lands. That's not numbness. That's just how your brain works.Moral Reasoning Isabelle brings up something from a philosophy course that's stayed with her. The idea that a friend is someone you agree to mourn if they die before you. That choosing to be close to someone is already a quiet acknowledgment that one of you will miss the other. She has never forgotten it.Practical Griever The person who, when loss shows up, immediately pivots to action. Makes the calls, brings the food, goes and cleans the house. David and Isabelle both recognize themselves here. The thing is, the grief doesn't go anywhere. It just waits until the room gets quiet.Ambiguous Losses Grief without a clear name or a socially accepted reason to mourn. Moving away from a city you loved. Losing a version of yourself. A friendship that ended without a conversation. Isabelle talks about still carrying grief from leaving Chicago. These losses are real. They just rarely get the space real grief deserves."Nora" David and Isabelle's shorthand for norepinephrine, the brain chemical wired into mood, attention, and stress response. Comes up here in the context of making sure your basic needs are met before you try to sit with the hard stuff. Nora has to be okay before grief can move through you the way it needs to.Duration Measure Isabelle's term for the container David's timer approach creates. When you decide you're going to sit with grief for a set amount of time and then get up, that's a duration measure. It makes the feeling tolerable because it has edges. You're not drowning in it. You know when it ends.Bobby Richards Isabelle's husband and the new Executive Producer of Something Shiny: ADHD. Gets a very well-earned shoutout in this episode for the audio upgrade you're hopefully hearing right now.Autonomic Nervous System The system that runs the involuntary stuff including heart rate, breathing, and stress response. Comes up in Isabelle's deep dive into dyspraxia and how the brain's predictive processing works differently in neurodivergent people.Dyspraxia A motor coordination difference that often shows up alongside ADHD and autism. Isabelle has a paradigm shift in this episode about what dyspraxia actually is and how it connects to the brain's predictive software. Why change is so dysregulating. Why your body is always ten steps behind your brain.AuDHD Having both autism and ADHD. Comes up as Isabelle and David get into the overlap between the two and what it means for how neurodivergent people process change, repetition, and sensory experience.-------💬 When has grief caught up with you in the quiet? On a walk, at 2 AM, weeks after you thought you were fine. Leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We read them.🎧 Follow Something Shiny: ADHD for more conversations that help you understand your ADHD and remind you, you were never too much.

You know that moment when you're doing something hard, painful, or just plain exhausting, and a tiny voice whispers, "Why is this so hard for me?" You're not alone and in this episode we'll break down where that comes from and how to escape the shame spiral.We're joined again by therapist Grace Gautier, a trans woman who works closely with trans and neurodivergent communities. Last week the group cracked open the shame so many of us carry about being “too much” or “not enough” and began to see those traits not as flaws, but as survival strategies. If you haven’t heard that one yet, listen here. It’s a grounding prequel to this one—especially if you’ve ever felt like you had to earn your way into belonging. This episode follows that path even deeper! Because once you name the systems that shaped you, the question becomes: now what?It's a conversation about internalized ableism, pushing through pain to prove worth, and the quiet (and sometimes loud) practice of unmasking. Not everywhere. Not all at once. Just somewhere. Together, they unpack:Why we equate doing hard things with being good enoughHow ableism hides in everyday pressure and perfectionismWhat it looks like to stop chasing ease and start honoring honestyThe quiet power of choosing to show up as yourselfIf you've ever felt stuck over performing while quietly falling apart, this conversation might be a the paradigm shift you need.🎧 Follow Something Shiny: ADHD for more conversations that help you understand your ADHD and remind you, you were never too much.

We gotta be able to handle hearing people talk about us, even when it's triggering and hard, because it can ultimately show us where the work is. And maybe you can be an expert on soething without having it yourself (like ADHD) but perhaps it requires a sense of curiosity, empathy, or some kind of introspection that recpognizes your lane, your scope, and your own biases? From anthropology and sociology to X-Men and who is Magneto and Charles Xavier, David and Isabelle meander through what it means to be an ally and also set up some solid recent hyperfixations.---We gotta tolerate hearing people talking about what they think about us, including people who have lots of degrees and expertise, and also know that each person doesn’t have the answers. Maybe it has to do with conversations that people have about us without us ADHDers? Then again there are journalists, who don’t have expertise but who can report on the data they get. David names that there are good and bad journalists, and there is critical thinking. How much about people’s ADHD ‘expertise’ includes interpersonal work and understanding about attachment, relationships, your own identity. Like, if you’re an expert on ADHD and you’re not friends with people who have ADHD outside of your work (if you yourself don’t have it)—something to look at? David names that as therapists, we have this debate about multicultural approaches—do you need to have a white therapist to work with white clients, a Black therapist to work with Black therapists? You need to know your lane and your expertise. David’s own therapist is not an expert in ADHD. And neither is Isabelle’s. They know to ask us questions, can ask “how does this relate to ADHD?” We might be the person with ADHD that helps them better understand that. Allies don’t want to get rid of parts of you, they want to help parts of you. An ally is different than a researcher, Isabelle wants to name that you need to be enough of an ally to a topic and be curious. In undergrad, she studied anthropology and archaeology, and it’s a blend of super specific science and also lots of educated guessing. She remembers learning about participant observation in anthropology, that just by observing a culture or a group you are impacting the group. It’s way more about noticing what your own biases are. David’s own background in sociology, the idea of intersectionality. David didn’t really think about ADHD or neurodiversity as a culture until college. He’s a big comic book fan and he loved the X-Men. They’re trying to hide their mutant powers to not be exploited by the government and the X-Men are trying to help these mutants and take them to saving. Charles Xavier and Magneto were portrayed to be iconic people. Magneto was Malcolm X while Charles Xavier was based on Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s two different portrayals around protecting yourself—do you get violent and active or passive? Maybe the mutants are a great metaphor for neurodiversity as well as the civil rights war—if you have been marginalized you can have empathy toward other people who are marginalized. It’s not so personal, people do things to us that they do to other marginalized groups. It can also signify that we have a culture. It would be if everyone says they have a pile of unfolded clothes that threaten your identity, your pile of mail—-culturally both David and Isabelle are both connected to the plan that they didn’t want to leave it there. When we connect about parts of our culture. Isabelle and David so appreciate this conversation. Isabelle names asynchronous processing—she can’t just off the cuff rattle off her ideas and also needs time to talk it out, externalize, and think about things beyond the initial moment or conversations. How important it is for us to keep having these conversations. Isabelle wonders if David is like Charles Xavier. He wishes he could be Charles Xavier. Isabelle might be Charles Xavier. Because maybe she loves or identifies with Patrick Stewart so much. So maybe David is Magneto—in the comic books they were best friends, and he was like “they’ll never learn, we need to protect our people” whereas as the other is like “don’t give in to our aggressive urges.” David needs to shout out: Dungeon Crawler Carl. Not wearing any pants, the cat jumps out of his house trying to get the cat out of the tree, and Carl can then go on an 18 level dungeon crawl and can save the planet earth. The audio book is a treasure, David is a big fan of role playing games, he consumed all seven books in less than three weeks. Isabelle names why cats get stuck in trees, their claws go the other way so they get stuck—but big cats can go backwards. Isabelle mentions an enneagram book that she really appreciates. She was hooked on Borders and loved it as a kid and would keep trying to have someone explain me to me, and one of those books was on the enneagram (which makes David feel like he went to the bathroom during learning fractions and never picked up on it). And she mispronounced it and would read the book at people. Because tell her she’s neurospicy without telling her she’s neurospicy.Stephanie Sarkis is an ADHD expert who also has ADHD X-Men and more on Patrick StewartThe American Psychological Association vote on 'homosexuality' being listed as a diagnosable mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) happened back in the LATE 80's (WHAAAATTTTT? yes).--there is a long history to depathologizing sexual identities, deeply impacted by tons of activism and advocacy. For more, you can see this NIH article on this history.Dungeon Crawler Carl seriesCats getting stuck on trees because of claw shape -- fascinatingly, going down backwards is a skill some cats can learn. Also, here is this website: Catrescueguy.com. *(you're welcome)*The amazing enneagram book Isabelle was trying to remember the title of -- The Unfiltered Enneagram by Elizabeth Orr------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards

Are ADHD, autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders overdiagnosed? Is it all in our heads? Is self-diagnosis legit? Isabelle and David take some common stigmas and misperceptions to task and explore how labels and identities can help or hurt, how policing stigma when you're not a member of the group being stigmatized (or asking us what we need), and the huge weight our world puts on external, visible behaviors rather than internal pain, frustrations, and strengths.-----Isabelle references a podcast episode she listened to recently, Armchair Expert with guest Suzanne O’Sullivan on overdiagnosis. She brings up the idea of psychosomatic illness, and the example this epilepsy expert uses is that there are a certain percentage of cases of epilepsy that appear very different on brain scans, that appear to be psychologically caused (or psychosomatic). This is one of those confusing, stigmatized concepts—Isabelle would originally think that this means “made up.” But NO. What it means is that people are still experiencing the symptoms, are still suffering from symptoms of seizures, sometimes way worse than those who on EEGs, etc. appear to have ‘epilepsy.’ It is the opposite of ‘in your head,’ it is very real. The same goes for the placebo effect, which is that when they do studies on medications or treatments, they have people do something neutral or take a sugar pill or a pill with no active ingredients. A percentage of people in every case will see symptom improvement or a positive effect. This does not mean it’s made up, it means the mind is powerful and just because we don’t know how something works doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring relief. And the same goes with nocebo, or the way things can have an adverse or ill effect, too. But now David and Isabelle get to the other idea this author has, about how ADHD and autism and other diagnoses are being ‘over diagnosed,’ because, as the author states, autism used to mean something different than it does now, because now people later in life who are high masking are being diagnosed with it—and the cutoff points for diagnoses are being too muddled, and isn’t it (as the author puts it), “awful that kids will be labelled with these self-fulfilling prophecies” that will create limiting beliefs for them, isn’t it causing harm, can’t we meet kids needs without these labels? And more so, the cut off point should be “disablement.” But wait a minute, isn’t that pre-diabetes? But isn’t it like the biggest predictor of heroin use is milk consumption…because everyone who takes heroin used to drink milk. David wants to come at this. David wants more inclusive education, he doesn’t want smaller and smaller classrooms, and what to have a very diverse set of people in the room. A diverse group of people learning at once. To answer why do we need to label them? Because every person has different needs, we need labels to tailor education to each person. The more standardized it becomes the more it becomes marginalized. Stay in your lane, let people within the culture manage the stigma around the culture. “Can you just include someone from these communities?” A bunch of people talking about us and deciding what’s harming us without talking to us. Isabelle refers back to psychopharmacology and psychopathology class—you gotta learn a ton about diagnostic criteria and learn how to categorize the experiences of people your seeing. Isabelle’s professor was a neuropsychologist and was very into accurate language. You can look at diagnoses from a couple of different angles—why do we diagnosis? We need to have a standardized understanding of a group of experiences, so when we talk about it we all say “this is the part that we mean.” There needs to be some kind of shared consensus around what ADHD means. Cut off points could be true for insurance purposes, political, and financial, and for research and understanding, and it also is not all encompassing—but if you accurately sync a person up to a diagnosis, it gives them an understanding of a person that helps them. Everyone isn’t self-diagnosing. It’s the people who resonate with the experiences of those who are AuDHD or autistic or an ADHDer. David names that he loves the podcast (as does Isabelle, she’s a big archerry) and that the people on this podcast are falling into something society does, not necessarily leading society there, which is validating external manifestations of pain rather than internal frustration. David leans on the work of Marcus Soutra, with the idea that perhaps instead of thinking of things as diagnoses, it's more of an identification. We’re accurately identifying people. Isabelle further details that they mention that mental health diagnoses go up when mental health awareness is spread. To which she wonders—what about how psychoeducation and awareness allow for people to be more vulnerable and feel safe disclosing what's really going on, internally? The example that ‘doesn’t everyone have a little ADHD’ is—-wrong. Nope, Not everyone. But maybe those who have untreated ADHD do? And with the example of Bill Gates identifying as autistic, and the author naming that she doesn’t see him as having struggles or disability, again, a very external definition—they have no clue about what he has gone through or what it is like to go through life not fully understanding yourself without such an identity. Autism and ADHD is not necessarily a learning difference Armchair Expert episode Isabelle is referencingSuzanne O'Sullivan's book, The Age of DiagnosisUSEFUL DEFINITIONSPsychosomatic - a word that literally means "mind" and "body" -- where stress or worry make a symptom or condition develop, get worse, or show up in the first place. While common usage means we often think this is saying "it's all in your head,"or that it's not real---it's saying the opposite: it's saying that the mind has such a powerful effect that it can cause real physical pain and suffering and that illnesses and all kinds of conditions can have many different causes. This does not mean what you're experiencing is not real, it means we now understand that stressors and emotions and our minds can connect to a number of health conditions. See here for more (Source: Cleveland Clinic).Placebo effect - the way a sugar pill or random remedy (used in clinical research trials for a medication, let's say, or a 'fake surgery' in surgical trials, where nothing is implanted or changed) produces symptom relief and improvement as if it were a real pill or real surgically-altering procedure. This means that the person experiences actual change, again, that is not explained by the treatment or pill being studied. We don't fully understand why this is, but we know it's there, and it likely has something to do with a person's expectations of whether something could help them. It has a big impact on research and neuroscience in general. See here for more (Source: NIH 2023)Nocebo effect - opposite from placebo, where a person's negative expectations play out when given a sugar pill or 'sham' surgery and their symptoms get worse even thought they did not receive any medicine or treatment that would give them side effects. See here for more (Source: NIH 2012). -----cover art by: Sol Vázqueztechnical support by: Bobby Richards

So with news articles and headlines about how folks with ADHD need to get off their meds or go outside or be 'cured', there's something of a big misunderstanding and gaps in perspectives on ADHD and what it actually means. Including our shared values as a real ADHD culture, especially around how people or authority figures will relate to us. David and Isabelle describe some of the shared values in neurodivergent or ADHD culture, including ideas around masking, disclosing, lateral thinking, and questioning authority--and whether you believe that others, particularly those in power, will help you or understand you. Exploring many aspects of the neurodivergent community--and how groups form--ADHDers (more likely than the average bear) identify as members of LGBTQ+ communities, members of nontraditional or non-dominant faith groups, entrepreneurs, tech-friendly folx, and members of the military, to start. From recognizing that there are stages and phases to feeling like you can both belong and be unique, to the power of community in developing a sense of self-esteem, the need to have metacognition (or an understanding of WHY a thing is or how it works for you). --David starts by naming that within a neurodivergent or ADHD culture, there are shared values. And what we believe might be impacted by our approach to masking and our context—did we have to mask a lot? Do we need masking or not? But it also asks us: do we believe that people will help us? That schools will help us? That people with power or systemic power will support us or understand us? David doesn't think that trust in these systems is high in the ADHD population. A lot of people don’t feel like they can trust the system and it might be why we don’t disclose, we don’t share, we don’t ask. We are a subgroup, but we are not substandard. Lots of wars being waged on ADHD, and that entire perspective ignores the things that are important. Since David joined Eye to Eye years ago and joined the ND community, he watched graduation rates go up, he’d give talks in a room and ask “who has adhd?” And no one would raise their hand. “Does it feel wrong to be asked?” And now when you talk about it in a group, people raise their hands right away. There is the good work. There is a cultural war on ADHD. Isabelle names that one of the strengths of ADHD, which is important to include in any future articles, is that we think ‘creatively,’ also known as lateral or divergent thinking. We don’t necessarily follow a linear thought process and skip around think laterally or divergently. For her fellow AuDHDers, Isabelle recognizes that she does want clarity and often tries to go back to a linear though process to make sure she’s understanding something clearly. But in general, the lateral thinking—lends itself to questioning authority, taking multiple perspectives, playing devil’s advocate, which doesn’t necessarily mean that people feel comfortable sharing this. There’s a larger percentage of us that identify as queer or LGBTQ+ communities, nonbinary, gender fluid—there’s also a larger percentage of us that its int he military, tech community, entrepreneurs. We tolerate risk differently. David names that this allows us a different way of recognizing our needs. If the rest of the world tells you something should meet your needs but it doesn’t, you’re going to maybe go back to the drawing board and start to think about things a little differently. You may be a more natural out of the box thinker, because of a lack of neural pruning. More doesn’t mean better, and it doesn’t mean worse. It’s not a a hierarchy. Just acknowledging it exists gives people a place to belong. Isabelle describes the stages of building a group—we first debate if we want to join, we norm and create a share a set of values and create a cohesion, and then the strength of the group’s cohesiveness is tested and retested with storming and questioning and then you come to the place where you are both an individual and belong, that both can coexist dynamically. Even in Isabelle’s own process of joining this group of neurodivergence, when she cried at the mailboxes with David, she is feeling this with the autistic side of her, and she’s seeing it everywhere and she deeply wants to belong, and then she’s questioning or noticing the differences, and then she’s cozy in being different and yet belonging. David names how important self esteem is for us; and we can’t really develop self esteem alone, it helps you to see others who get it and can resonate with you. Three most important factors: self esteem, ability to advocate for your needs, and metacognition (understand we do what we do). You shouldn’t have to try so hard to ‘fit into’ a culture, it should be more natural. Isabelle names how metacognition, or changing your operating instructions, gives you a chance to reframe your own history, your present and your plans, and your needs are different than what you realized. Referencing the NYT article about ADHD meds—if you have no concept of what medication is doing for you or connecting with your medication, it's like you’re fueling yourself up with a really good fuel source and you have no direction to put it in. David wants a formalized response to the NYTimes article. A formal round table. The strengths of ADHD — see Dr. Holly White's work at the University of Michigan (Scientific American article)Divergent or lateral thinking - probably most commonly called "brainstorming," it's when you generate multiple ideas, applications, solutions, problems, and hop around instead of just focusing on one answer--see this interesting guide from the University of Texas at Austin that helps teachers learn how to ENCOURAGE divergent thinking in their students. How divergent thinking is connected to creativity (study)As well as addressing self esteem and practicing self-advocacy, work with ADHD means developing:Metacognition — thinking about your thinking, or why you do what you do. It’s like understanding you’ve been handled incorrect or inapplicable instructions. Knowing why you need an accommodation and why it helps. It involves an awareness as well as an ability to regulate/choose a strategy (eg. changing how you study for a particular test). (source: Wikipedia).------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards------Cover Art by: Sol VázquezTechnical Support by: Bobby Richards

Isabelle finishes sharing her neuropsych results, including recommendations for ADHD and autism (HINT: unmask! WHAT?) From the categorization of ADHD like a storm warning system (Mild/moderate/severe) to how job interviews might be the one place to mask (and how David does his interviews), David and Isabelle spelunk around how certain measures, like empathy, are not 'markers' of autism in the way we may think. Share your favorite fidgets with us! Go to somethingshinypodcast.com/fidgetlove now!---Isabelle goes into greater detail about how her neuropsychological assessment was able to show her how she initiates and sustains auditory and visual attention and a little bit on processing speed. But to get more data, she’d need to undergo testing designed for people with traumatic brain injuries or strokes or dementia—what? It's a little strange to realize that the gold standard for learning more about brain functioning as a grown up with ADHD is the same that’s used for brain injuries. David points out that he uses the word neurodivergent intentionally, in order to point out that there is a diversity of brains, rather than a deficiency or something wrong with you. There are brains that work well in crisis and brains that work well when things are calm. Doesn’t that make sense? Would we say that someone would be “severely apt” at handling chaos? Maybe, you just do what you’re good at? Isabelle goes back to the scale of mild/moderate/severe ADHD—mild reads as boring, moderate—moderation SUCKS—all the words for the scale are poor. David names: if you can’t use the words to apply to “happiness” —it’s a bad scale for humans. Would you say you are ‘mildly or severely happy?” Probably not. So maybe we use different words for humans. People with ADHD are not storms and do not require storm warnings (last time we checked). As part of her neuropsychological evaluation, Isabelle got pages and pages of recommendations for next steps. She got a lot of great data, and also realized that one episode of Something Shiny provides more—so that was affirming and helpful in terms of the work the podcast and its community are doing. Her evaluator left off her autism recommendations, sending them along later, but said, essentially, the only recommendation is to unmask more. That “the only place masking is helpful is in job interviews.” Other than that it’s harmful. It takes energy, it burns people out, it’s hard. Isabelle then goes on to rant about how biased job interviews are, unless you’re giving case examples—but then, David is also super good at job interviews. He checks—did you go to high school or college? Cool, you must be smart. Then, do you want to work with him? Check. Then, would he want to hang out with this person? Yup. And finally, a bunch of curveballs to see how people think on their feet. Because that helps you see how people think and how they communicate about their problem solving, which is good data. Then David names that there are questions he’d love to ask about people that he can’t, beyond the protected class questions about age or location or self-identity—he wishes he could ask if someone is neurodivergent or if someone in their family is neurodivergent, that is an asset to David. He sees the ability to think outside the box in order to do what they do. But he knows he’s not trusted, most hiring people are lying to you, employers are anxious, you’re not going to like them. Every employer is terrified of rejection, it’s so complicated. But he sees neurodiversity and awareness of that as a major plus—if somebody understands that and has self-esteem around it, knows what accommodations they need, they are curious about that. Isabelle has such a bias for self-insight—she wonders, how someone who was so socially off the rhythm of her peers, how was it that she had a lot of high measures for sensory things, but high measures on empathy? Which seems odd, because all of the autistic people Isabelle knows have off the charts empathy, which David concurs. Like the empathy for the crushed ant on the sidewalk. This is so true for Isabelle, she remembers crying for hours about a three-legged hamster she saw in a pet store named “Tiny Tim”—in retrospect, his paw was probably chewed off by his littermates or his mom because hamsters are ROUGH like that—but her mom told her he was okay because he was “fat”—to be fair, she was fatphobic and Polish immigrant mentality an maybe also autistic herself, but she was so distraught. She used to track one ant walking all the way to its hill to make sure it made it because she felt personally responsible for seeing that it was okay. She was so scared she’d look at it later and wonder if she wasn’t autistic—but the stakes were so high, she was scared of not having the community she felt like she was on the cusp of having and understanding. As David puts it: "we will fight for worth and identity." Even more so, Isabelle learns that her own stereotype about autism meaning she is low empathy (even indicated on the 'measures' of autism on the assessments she took) is where she doesn't 'meet criteria' for autism, and how that would keep her up at night. Until her neuropsychiatrist pointed out: it has more to do with a snapshot of where you are and your accommodations. Of course someone who is in their 40's, has been high masking their whole life, and who special interests in humans AKA psychology would be high on empathy measures--she wasn't like this as a kid but it took decades for her to 'get it.' And what a revelation, that autism and empathy are not what we stereotypically assume they might be!Also, send us photos or links to your fave fidgets! We'll put 'em on our website and share the fidget love. DEFINITIONSNote: “Neuropsych” is shorthand for BOTH a neuropsychological assessment or a neuropsychologist (which is confusing).Neuropsychologist is "an expert in how brain injuries and conditions affect your behavior, mood and thinking skills. They perform neuropsychological evaluations to assess how your brain and mind are working and suggest treatment plans." (Source: Cleveland Clinic).A neuropsychological assessment is a series of interviews and tests (computer, written, drawing, solving puzzles, etc. no magnets, radiation, electrodes, or medical procedures involved) — the type of test is based on what is being explored. This battery (or collection) of tests, often done across multiple sessions, help a neuropsychologist determine a psychological diagnosis, treatment plan, and get a sense of how your brain works. Typically recommended by school systems/medical system to assess kids to help figure out what learning differences and accommodations may be helpful, but these assessments are not just for kids! Adults can use them to gain self-understanding, establish a baseline (if dementia or high-risk contact sports play is involved), or even figure out what parts of your brain have been injured or might be affected by brain surgery. Because kids grow and development so much, they are often redone every 2-4 years. Here’s more on neuropsychological assessments from the Cleveland Clinic.Masking: when neurodivergent individuals pretend to be neurotypical, hide or minimize their stims, and even pretend they have the sam...

David and Isabelle go into greater depth about neuropsychological assessments--both back in the day and now-for kids, and for adults--and Isabelle's AHA moment about self-disclosing her AuDHD self. From the odd history of the intersection of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and ADHD (did you know you couldn't be diagnosed with both for a long long time?) to realizing how literally she takes the world and how much it helps to finally have a turn signal on the car that is her, David and Isabelle dive deep into unmasking and the mistrust we have for the world when we are so misunderstood.---Isabelle likes having her new neuropsychological results because someone who is not her got to tell her that she has autism, and David has a different experience. His story was like three different hours of testing done at school, and it spit out that he was Oppositional Defiant, and then only in college did it notice he had differences in spelling and then ADHD. His experience is watching clients have their kids be flagged by a pediatrician or teacher to be tested and then they want to retest themselves. But David is so scared he’d go in now and learn…he doesn’t have ADHD? And that Isabelle actually understands this, because there was a big gap (of several months) between the interview and the tests. Isabelle goes into further details around how she took her test in a little cubicle. And how for kids, it looks more like play, it involves an IQ test and way more details about processing speed, working memory, visual spatial reasoning, reading, symbols, numbers, etc. to help with understanding learning differences and accommodations. So Isabelle had to sit in a cubicle and stare at a computer and click on a mouse for fifteen minutes and it was awful. When he was a kid, David was pulled from class, he had no idea how long it was going to take, there was a person sitting there who was reading from a book and asking him questions. For kids, a level of buy-in becomes very important, it’s hard to get data when you’re a willing participant. For David, his first neuropsych showed how unwilling he was to participate, because it was something he was forced to do because there was “something wrong” and they were looking for what was wrong. This is not don’t like this anymore. It’s important to talk to someone who has been assessed to see how they liked their assessment. You can get a second opinion. There are people who specialize in different areas of neuropsychological testing. And someone who is great at diagnosing ADHD may not be great at diagnosing autism or vice versa. And up until 7 years ago or so, it was impossible to have both autism and ADHD be a primary diagnosis; which connected to insurance company lobbying when the DSM was being updated, ensuring that the rates of certain conditions wouldn’t skyrocket because that would impact insurance coverage and ability to cover/deny and all kinds of political and social isms. The history of diagnoses and what makes the cutoffs incorporates layers of ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia…all kinds of oppression. David names how important it was an opening when you could have a combined AuDHD diagnosis because it started to mean that these diagnoses of deficiency, and all the stereotypes around all autistics being nonspeakers or having high support needs, started to get busted and it became more encompassing, maybe even of strengths? It’s possible for us to be complex beings, being perceived as having ADHD or autism in another context. We are the keepers of the stigma, it was the ‘last thing we wanted to be.’ The other day, Isabelle’s kid went to the doctor, and she always felt the doctor was annoyed with her for being so literal and asking so many detail-oriented questions. Her kid answered the doctor’s question of “does your throat hurt?” By checking in and saying “No.” And she had a lightbulb flash and realized he was taking the doctor literally. So she tells her kid “You and me, we both take things really literally and answer questions extremely honestly. I think the doctor means when she asks if your throat hurts, she means across the last week or so and not necessarily all the time or right now.” And he answers, “YES!” And she saw the doctor warm up to her kid and to her and she felt the difference, and maybe it was the vulnerability or the disclosure. For David's friend, there was a significant amount of distrust in the world, there was a pattern of miscommunication and people asking you things that they don’t mean, when they learned they were autistic, their last instinct was to tell someone. But when they came back from the dentist, they talked about how much the light was bothering them, they gave me some glasses and made it so much better. David can't make us all believe we are safe, we can feel cared for when we tell people what we need and they respond. Statistically, some of the time, your need won't be missed and until recently, Isabelle didn't know she really needed, she would’ve said words like “anxious” and “please give me more time"